Rasha Saad writes on the Lebanese presidential elections and the many players involved In the wake of Lebanese presidential elections being postponed for the third time for a lack of consensus, Lebanese and other Arab pundits warn political players against serving foreign interests, whether regional or international, over the national cause. In the Lebanese daily An-Nahar, Edmon Saab wrote that it is true that the Lebanese are usually divided over every tiny issue because confidence among internal parties is almost non-existent. However Saab argues, "it is unfair that an external party or a mediator would be the source of salvation of the presidential quandary and its related controversial issues." Saab argues that ironically, as the number of foreign mediators, whose mission is to help Lebanon reach a solution, increases, the Lebanese feel that the solution is being further distanced. "With the interference of mediators the Lebanese feel that their country is being hijacked and is being fought for by more than one hijacker." Saab explained that the Lebanese file is now being debated between Damascus and Paris, and between the French and US presidents after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned against any consensus on the president that excludes the 14 March group. "What devil is it that is sidelining the Lebanese people and is paralysing their will to take an independent decision? Is it the Syrian or the American devil or is it an entirely new one that the Lebanese did not encounter before?" In "Lebanon: Why is the presidential election becoming crucial?" Amir Taheri warned against regional interference in the Lebanese scene. In the London- based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, Taheri described ex-general and present presidential candidate Michel Aoun as "a pawn for the Islamic Republic's regional power struggle against the United States." Taheri wrote that earlier this week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dispatched Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki to Damascus with a single message: Tehran wants Aoun and no one else as the next president of Lebanon. Believing that he is pushing the US into retreat across the chessboard, from Afghanistan to Iraq and passing by the Caspian basin, Taheri explains, Ahmadinejad hopes that a spectacular success in Lebanon would enhance his own prospects for winning a majority in the Iranian general election next spring and would humiliate the US. "The way things are shaping up in Lebanon, the presidential election is assuming an importance far beyond its actual dimensions," Taheri wrote. According to him it could end in four different ways. First, Ahmadinejad wins by imposing Aoun. Secondly, the US and its Arab allies succeed in imposing the choice of the pro-West majority. Thirdly, the current parliament is prevented from electing anyone because it fails to come up with a quorum or because enough of the majority deputies are murdered to create a hung parliament. Finally, the two rival camps, that is to say the majority and the Iran- backed opposition, agree on a consensus candidate and allow the system to continue functioning, albeit in a creaking manner, which is according to Taheri the only option that could save Lebanon from becoming a battlefield for rival powers yet again. Taheri insists that Aoun could help bring that option about by publicly ruling out his own candidacy, thus leaving Tehran with no obvious pawn to advance. "Aoun may have to anger Ahmadinejad. But he might reunite the Christian community, win kudos in Damascus and even improve his disastrous image in the West and among moderate Arab states." In the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper Abdullah Iskandar wrote that it appears that whenever the Lebanese approach the appointed time for the end of the presidential term of office, the pace of change increases in a manner that afflicts almost everybody with schizophrenia. According to Iskandar, the Lebanese, from their different regions and sects, fear the passage of the last 10 days of the term of office without a new president. "In order to reach the 24th day of this month in light of the existence of a new president, it is not important who or how. That is, whoever the president is, and in whatever circumstance he comes from, the worst solution is better than the imminent evil," Iskandar wrote. Focussing on foreign mediation, Iskandar wrote that half of the failure of the mission of the French delegation is attributable to the fact that the basis of their activity was based on the notion that the one who is agreed upon must be issued by the Maronite Patriarchate, while the entire problem is in another place. It is, according to Iskandar, in the function of the president, who, in order to be agree upon, must meet the demands of the opposition and not reflect the parliamentary balance of power. "Agreement here does not mean reciprocal concessions to reach a common denominator. It means covering all of the constitutional and legal violations that have occurred since the last parliamentary elections, and which produced a majority and a minority in opposition," Iskandar wrote. The most prominent of these violations, Iskandar explained, were: extorting the right of a sect to paralyse the institution of the Chamber of Deputies, giving the speaker of the Chamber of Deputies the right to freeze parliamentary activity; establishing the right of an armed side, outside the framework of the state, to lead the entire country to wherever it wishes; a side's extortion of the right to close the centre of the capital; a candidate for president considering that it is his constitutional right to be the only presidential candidate; establishing the principle that Lebanese-Syrian relations are subject to Damascus being pleased with the president, if not a boycott of the Lebanese state. "All of the issues will be raised with force before any president who is agreed upon," Iskandar concluded. Also in Al-Hayat Zuheir Kseibati wrote that "no Lebanese is posing the question of which takes priority: His Excellency the president or its majesty the nation?" Kseibati wrote, "the election is certainly one of the stopping points on the way to any solution, and it will take the country from the nightmare of the unknown, which is called chaos or civil war along the lines of 'Iraqisation'".
